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01 / SUPPLEMENTS

Supplement merchant accounts, without the guesswork.

We match supplement and nutraceutical brands with processors whose underwriting actually fits the business - the billing model, the claim language, the supplier chain, the geography. Then we walk you through the application, the pricing, the reserve and the contract terms.

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Free to use · Team responds ASAP · We’re paid by the processor, not you.

Tell us about the business.

A short form. We’ll come back with processors that fit, not a list of everyone who says they support high risk.

We use this to match you. We don’t sell it. Please don’t send card numbers or bank details.

The short version

  • A supplement merchant account is not a retail account with a different label on it. It is a high-risk account, and “high risk” here is a statement about your billing model, your claims and your chargeback pattern - not about what’s in the capsule.
  • The billing model decides the file. One-time purchase, straight subscription, free-trial-to-subscription and subscription-with-upsells are four different underwriting problems, and processors price them four different ways.
  • Free-trial offers are the hardest to place. Visa expects a reminder at least 7 days before the first paid recurring charge; Mastercard expects the acquirer to register continuity merchants before the first transaction runs.
  • Card rates for supplement and nutraceutical brands typically run 2.69% to 6%, with rolling reserves of 5% to 10% held for 90 to 180 days. Some processors hold reserves for six months on trial offers.
  • Chargeback tolerance usually sits around 0.9% under Visa’s monitoring program and 1.5% under Mastercard’s - and a given processor’s own threshold is often tighter than the network’s.
  • MCC 5499 is the code for straightforward supplement sales. MCC 5968 is the code for trial and continuity offers. The code tells every risk system downstream what kind of merchant the bank just boarded.
  • Health claims are underwriting evidence. Weight-loss promises, before-and-after photos and outcome testimonials get read the same way an investigator reads them.
  • Own site versus marketplace changes the file. A brand selling only on Amazon is a payout business; a brand running its own checkout carries the full chargeback liability.
  • We’re free to use. We’re paid by the processor when a merchant we match starts processing.
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02 / WHY SUPPLEMENT BRANDS GET DECLINED

Why supplement brands get declined.

Most supplement and nutraceutical merchants who get turned down assume the problem is the product. It usually isn’t. Supplements are a legal, mainstream category - they sit on grocery shelves, in pharmacies and on every marketplace in the country. What gets them declined is a set of billing and marketing patterns that banks have learned to price as high risk, and those patterns show up in the same four places almost every time.

Recurring billing. The moment a supplement brand charges a card more than once, it stops being a simple ecommerce merchant and becomes a negative-option merchant. The customer authorized the charge once, at sign-up, and every subsequent charge runs on that original consent. Card network rules for recurring transactions are specific about how those charges are described, disclosed and cancelled, and a dispute over an auto-renew is the most common complaint pattern in the category. A $79 subscription that quietly renews for nine months before the customer notices is a $711 chargeback, not a $79 one.

Free-trial offers. A free trial - or a $1 trial, or a “just pay shipping” offer - is the sharpest version of the same problem. It converts at a much higher rate than a straight subscription, which is exactly why it attracts risk. The cardholder takes something for free or nearly free and forgets about it, then disputes the first real charge several weeks later. Underwriters have seen this pattern across enough merchants to treat it as its own risk class, not as a variant of subscription billing.

Health claims. A supplement brand sells a promise as much as a capsule. Weight loss, “clinically proven,” “burns fat,” an ingredient that “treats” or “prevents” something - every one of those is a claim the bank has to assume you can defend, because a claim that pulls a regulator’s attention turns into a complaint, and a complaint turns into a chargeback and a news cycle. Processors read your marketing pages as a description of how risky the account will be.

Chargeback exposure from subscription fatigue. A subscriber who stops using the product and forgets to cancel eventually disputes several months of charges at once, and often files a single complaint with the bank rather than a refund request with you. In a one-time-purchase business, one unhappy customer is one transaction. In a subscription business, one unhappy customer can be six. That’s the arithmetic underwriters run before they quote you.

So the processor isn’t asking “are supplements legal.” It’s asking “can I underwrite this specific business - this billing model, this claim set, this supplier chain, this geography - at a price that covers the risk.” A lot of processors can’t. The ones that can are the ones we work with.

The decline reasons we see most often:

  1. 01
    The processor has no supplement policy. The website says “high risk,” but the acquiring bank underneath it has never boarded a nutraceutical merchant and won’t start with yours. The application dies at the bank, not at the processor.
  2. 02
    The billing model was described as something simpler than it is. The application says “ecommerce retail.” The checkout sells a free trial that converts to a subscription and adds a bundle at step three. That’s a different category, and the mismatch ends the file.
  3. 03
    Claims that live where the merchant forgot to look. Meta descriptions, blog posts, abandoned affiliate pages, an old testimonial page, the ad copy running on a social platform. Underwriting finds them.
  4. 04
    Product documentation that doesn’t exist. No certificates of analysis, no supplier paperwork, no label artwork. Underwriting can’t verify what’s being sold, so it declines rather than guess.
  5. 05
    Chargeback history that surfaced during underwriting instead of being disclosed upfront. Rate is arguable. Concealment isn’t.
  6. 06
    Geography and sourcing the file can’t account for. Unnamed overseas manufacturing, no customs paper trail, or a shipping footprint that includes jurisdictions the processor won’t touch.

None of these are permanent. Most are an application problem, a documentation problem, or both.

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03 / BILLING MODEL

The billing model decides your file.

This is the section that matters. If you understand nothing else about supplement payment processing, understand that underwriters do not price “supplements.” They price a billing model with a supplement attached. The same brand, the same products and the same monthly volume can be a comfortable file or an unboardable one depending on which of these four models it runs.

01

One-time purchase

The simplest model: the customer buys a bottle, pays once, and the transaction ends. No stored consent, no recurring authorization, no future charge.

This is the easiest file to place. The chargeback profile is bounded - the customer either gets what they ordered or disputes it once - and the risk is essentially ordinary ecommerce risk with a consumable product on top. Underwriting focuses on product documentation, supplier sourcing, average ticket and geography. If those are clean, this is where the lowest rates and smallest reserves in the vertical live. Many one-time-purchase brands get boarded under MCC 5499 and never touch a trial registration.

The catch is volume. Straight sales churn, and most supplement brands discover within a year that recurring revenue is the only way to make the unit economics work. That’s when the file changes class.

02

Straight subscription

The customer pays, up front and knowingly, for a recurring delivery - a monthly bottle, a quarterly bundle - with no free trial in front of it. They know they’re subscribing at sign-up and the first charge is a real charge.

This is the second-easiest model and the most common one we see from established brand owners. It’s underwritten on the strength of its disclosure and cancellation flow rather than on the offer itself. Processors want to see: does the checkout state the recurring amount and frequency in the same size text as the buy button? Is there a consent record you can produce on request? Is there a cancellation path that doesn’t require an email chain? Does the descriptor on the customer’s statement match the brand name they recognize?

A clean straight-subscription brand with a recognizable descriptor, a visible cancel button and a pre-renewal reminder is a fundamentally different file from a brand that hides all three.

03

Free-trial-to-subscription (negative option)

The customer pays nothing, or a token amount, to start, and the card is charged in full when the trial ends unless they cancel first. The customer’s silence becomes consent to a charge.

This is the hardest model in the vertical. The economics are seductive - a free trial converts far more people than a paid subscription - but the offer is structurally designed to produce the dispute pattern banks hate most, because it depends on people not noticing something. A meaningful share of free-trial subscribers never engage with the product, never cancel and dispute the first real charge as soon as it lands.

Processors handle free trials by pricing for the worst case. Expect the top of the rate range, a reserve at the high end, a longer hold - some processors hold reserves for six months on trial offers specifically - and a hard look at the disclosure, the reminder flow and the cancellation mechanism. Some processors won’t board free-trial offers at all, at any price. Finding that out in week one beats finding it out after you’ve built the funnel.

04

Subscription with upsells

The customer subscribes, and the checkout or a follow-up step adds something else - a second product, a bundle, a higher tier, a one-time add-on charged alongside the recurring order. A $49 subscription can be a $140 first order once the upsell and shipping land in the cart.

This model sits between straight subscription and free trial. The recurring charge itself is disclosed, but the first charge is larger and more surprising than the customer expected, which is its own chargeback generator. A checkout that adds a charge the customer never explicitly confirmed - a pre-checked box, a bundled item buried under the main offer, a “special one-time deal” that appears after card entry - is the fastest route to a decline.

Done properly - every add-on its own affirmative checkbox with its own price and its own consent - an upsell subscription is underwritable and priced only slightly above a straight subscription. Done the aggressive way, it converges on free-trial risk and is priced and monitored accordingly.

Why free trials are the hardest to place, in one line: every other model charges the customer for something they asked for, and the free trial charges them for something they were hoping to forget.

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04 / UNDERWRITING

What processors actually look at.

Seven things decide a supplement application. Everything else is conversation.

01

MCC codes - 5499 and 5968

The merchant category code is how the networks and the acquiring bank classify what you sell, and it drives interchange, which network rules apply and which monitoring program watches the account. MCC 5499 is the miscellaneous food and specialty retail code, and it’s where straightforward supplement sales typically land. Under Visa’s Merchant Data Standards Manual, a merchant that merely offers recurring purchases should generally still use the code that best describes its business. MCC 5968 is the direct-marketing continuity and subscription code, and it governs trial and continuity offers, including nutraceuticals sold for ongoing delivery. The code change isn’t cosmetic: it pulls the account into a different monitoring and registration regime. Ask, in writing, which MCC the processor intends to register for each sales flow - a one-time store and a trial funnel side by side may need two codes, and quite possibly two accounts.

02

Chargeback ratios and monitoring thresholds

Most processors work to an internal tolerance somewhere between 0.9% and 1.5% of transactions. That range comes from the card networks’ own monitoring programs - Visa’s Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP), which counts issuer-reported fraud reports and disputes against settled transactions, and Mastercard’s Excessive Chargeback programs, with their own counting rules. In practice a processor’s tolerance is usually tighter than the network number. A ratio you disclose and explain is survivable; the same ratio that surfaces during underwriting after you described a clean account is not.

03

Product documentation

Certificates of analysis, ingredient lists, label artwork, lot numbers, the name of the lab that ran the panel. Underwriting wants proof that you know exactly what’s in the product and where it came from. Merchants with lot-level documentation get boarded faster and priced lower than merchants who send a supplier PDF with the logo cropped off. This is the single cheapest thing you can improve before applying.

04

Claim language

Every claim on your site, your ads and your packaging is read as evidence of how the brand behaves under pressure. A claim that promises a health outcome is a promise the bank assumes you’ll have to defend, and defended claims generate complaints. We cover what underwriting looks for in the health-claims section below, because it’s the one factor most brands underestimate.

05

Supplier sourcing

Who manufactures the product, in which country, and can you produce invoices that match your certificates of analysis. Domestic, named suppliers are the easiest file. Unnamed overseas sourcing with no paper trail is the hardest. If you import, expect requests for customs and shipping documentation as well.

06

Geography

Where you’re incorporated, where your bank account sits, where you ship, and which states or countries you exclude. Domestic-only shipping from a documented footprint prices better than worldwide shipping from a single-page store. International card traffic on a US supplement merchant is one of the fastest ways to have a reserve placed on the account.

07

Own checkout or marketplace

Where the transaction actually happens changes the entire file. A brand running its own checkout is the merchant of record and carries the full chargeback liability. A brand selling only on a marketplace is paid out by the marketplace and doesn’t process the card at all. Those are two different businesses to a bank, and we give this its own section below.

05 / RATES AND RESERVES

What supplement processing actually costs.

These are the ranges we see across the supplement and nutraceutical brands we place. Your number depends on the factors above - treat this as a benchmark to sanity-check a quote against, not a price list. Nothing here is an offer or a quote.

Ranges reflect what we see in live supplement and nutraceutical placements. One-time-purchase brands sit at the low end of both rate and reserve. Trial offers sit at the high end, and a trial offer with a thin processing history is where processors start talking about holding reserves for six months.
Billing modelTypical card rateTypical rolling reserveTypical hold
One-time purchase, documented supply chain2.69% – 4.0%5% – 10%90 – 120 days
Straight subscription, clean disclosure3.0% – 4.5%5% – 10%90 – 180 days
Subscription with upsells (consented add-ons)3.5% – 5.0%5% – 10%90 – 180 days
Free-trial to subscription (negative option)4.5% – 6.0%5% – 10%120 – 180 days
Trial offer with elevated chargebacks or thin history5.0% – 6.0%+10%up to 6 months
High chargeback history (any model)5.0% – 6.0%+10%180 days

Two numbers deserve their own table, because they’re the ones that get a brand shut down rather than merely repriced.

Monitoring programThresholdWhat it counts
Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program (VAMP)~0.9% of settled transactionsIssuer-reported fraud reports plus disputes
Mastercard Excessive Chargeback program (ECM)1.5% plus 100 chargebacks in a monthChargebacks against settled transactions

Read carefully. The two numbers measure different things. Visa’s ratio folds fraud reports in with disputes, so a brand with clean disputes but a fraud problem can trip it. Mastercard’s requires both the ratio and a minimum count, so a small merchant can run a scary-looking percentage without qualifying. The thresholds have also been tightening over time, so treat 0.9% and 1.5% as working targets rather than permanent facts - and ask your processor what its own tolerance is, because that’s the number that governs your account.

A supplement quote below roughly 2.5% - particularly on a subscription or trial offer - usually means the processor hasn’t underwritten the vertical properly. It surfaces later, as a mid-contract rate review, a sudden reserve, a held payout or a shutdown notice.

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06 / FREE TRIALS

Free trials and negative option: the rules that trip brands up.

Free-trial and negative-option offers are governed by specific card network rules, and a brand that ignores them doesn’t just risk a decline - it risks losing the account after it’s live. Here’s the shape of the rules. This is general information, not legal advice, and the rules change; confirm the current requirements with your processor.

Visa’s pre-trial reminder. Under Visa’s rules for subscription merchants offering free trials, a merchant running a free or discounted trial that rolls into a recurring charge must send the cardholder a reminder at least 7 days before the first paid recurring charge, and that reminder has to include a simple way to cancel online - a link, not an email address. Visa expects the reminder to be electronic, such as email or SMS, unless the cardholder consented to another method. There’s a narrow exception: for trials of 7 days or less, the merchant can fold the reminder details into the sign-up confirmation instead, provided that confirmation states when the trial ends and how to cancel. Visa’s flier on the trial subscription updates lays out the full flow.

Visa also expects more around the reminder: express consent to the ongoing subscription at enrollment, even when the initial charge is $0; a confirmation of terms that states the subscription continues unless cancelled, the start date, the ongoing amount and the billing frequency, plus the cancellation link; clear trial disclosure on the receipt; an easy online cancellation path that works regardless of how the customer signed up; and a trial-related enhanced descriptor on the first charge after the trial - something like “End Trial” - so the cardholder can connect the charge to the offer they accepted. The full policy sits in Visa’s Updated Policy for Subscription Merchants Offering Free Trials.

Mastercard’s trial registration. Mastercard approaches the same problem from the acquirer’s side. For covered negative-option offers of recurring physical products - which is exactly what a supplement trial that converts to recurring shipments is - Mastercard requires the acquirer to register the merchant before the transactions run, and to code them under the continuity/subscription code (MCC 5968) rather than a standard retail code. Registration is the acquiring bank’s obligation, not yours, but it’s your account that suffers when it isn’t done. Ask your processor to confirm in writing that the registration is complete before your first transaction, and which MCC will be used. The detail lives in the Mastercard subscription and negative-option FAQ and in the Security Rules and Procedures manual.

Why processors treat free trials as the highest-risk model. Compliance with the rules is the floor, not the ceiling. A processor is pricing the probability that a meaningful share of your trial subscribers dispute the first paid charge, whether or not your reminder email was technically compliant. So a trial file gets the top of the rate range, the longest hold, the most frequent review, and in some cases a flat no. Design the offer so the reminder is genuinely useful rather than merely present - the difference between a trial with a 1.0% dispute rate and one with a 2.5% dispute rate is the difference between an account that lasts and one that gets terminated.

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07 / HEALTH CLAIMS

Health claims are underwriting evidence.

Most supplement brands treat underwriting as a paperwork exercise and their marketing as a separate creative problem. Underwriting treats the marketing as evidence. Your product pages, blog, testimonials, ad copy, meta descriptions and packaging are all read as a description of what you’re selling and how risky the account will be - and unlike a regulatory review, underwriting doesn’t need to prove the claim is unlawful. It only needs to decide whether the claim makes you look like a brand that attracts disputes and regulators.

The structure-function lines. For claims about how a nutrient or ingredient affects a normal body structure or function - “supports immune function,” “helps maintain healthy digestion” - the FDA expects the labeling to carry a specific disclaimer, set out in the structure/function claims guidance and in 21 CFR 101.93: a boldface statement that the claim has not been evaluated by the FDA and that the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Claims are not pre-approved, but the responsible firm has to have substantiation, and it has to notify the FDA within 30 days after first marketing a supplement carrying such a claim.

Two things matter for payments. First, the difference between a structure-function claim and a disease claim isn’t cosmetic to a bank - disease claims (“treats,” “cures,” “prevents,” “clinically proven to reduce”) read as drug claims, and drug claims read as a brand that will attract regulatory complaints. Second, the disclaimer has to be consistent. A boldface FDA disclaimer in the footer of a page that promises weight loss 400 pixels above it doesn’t establish anything. Underwriters notice contradiction faster than compliance.

The claims underwriters flag:

  • Weight-loss and fat-loss promises. The single most scrutinized claim in the category, and the one most closely tied to chargeback complaints - the customer didn’t lose the weight, so they dispute.
  • Before-and-after imagery. Pictures carry claims whether or not the caption makes one. Banks read the image as a promise.
  • Testimonials that describe an outcome. A review that says “I lost 20 pounds” or “my joint pain is gone” is a health claim, even though it came from a customer.
  • Naming a disease or a prescription drug. “For diabetics,” “a natural alternative to Ozempic” - anything that pulls the product toward a medical condition moves it toward drug risk.
  • “Clinically proven” and “doctor recommended.” These imply evidence, and the FTC’s Health Products Compliance Guidance sets the bar for what backs them up: competent and reliable scientific evidence, generally human randomized controlled trials for a health-benefit claim, assessed against the specific claim, dose, formulation and population. The FTC reads implied claims and the overall impression of the page, and small-print disclaimers don’t cure an unsupported claim.

The pre-application pass. Do this before you submit anything. It takes an afternoon and it changes outcomes more than any negotiation over rate.

  1. 01
    Move the required FDA disclaimer adjacent to each claim, at claim size - not buried in the terms.
  2. 02
    Strip outcome and disease language from product pages, descriptions, blog posts and paid ads.
  3. 03
    Remove before-and-after imagery and any testimonial that references a health result.
  4. 04
    Replace “clinically proven” with a specific, substantiated statement or delete it.
  5. 05
    Clean the metadata. Meta titles and descriptions and email flows get read too.
  6. 06
    Review old affiliate pages, comparison pages and support content; a two-year-old page promising results is still live evidence.
  7. 07
    Make your certificates of analysis and supplier documentation findable before you apply.

This section is general information about how underwriting reads marketing, not legal or medical advice. Labeling, claims and advertising obligations are matters for your own counsel.

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08 / OWN SITE VS MARKETPLACE

Own site vs marketplace.

We raise this early with every brand, because it changes which processors are even relevant. It’s also the factor the big competitor pages skip, and it trips up brands that grew on Amazon before deciding they wanted their own storefront.

01

Selling only on a marketplace

When you sell on Amazon, Walmart Marketplace or a similar platform, the marketplace is the merchant of record. It submits the card transaction, absorbs the chargeback and pays you out on a settlement schedule. You are not processing cards at all. To a bank, that makes you a payout business, not a card-acceptance business.

That sounds like it should make you an easy file, but it also means there is no processing history to underwrite. A brand that has processed $2 million through Amazon has no merchant statements of its own, so a processor evaluating you for a direct account can’t see a chargeback ratio, a refund rate or a volume trend.

If your only channel is a marketplace, you may not need a high-risk merchant account for those sales at all - what you need one for is the storefront you’re planning. When you do apply for a direct account, marketplace settlement reports and payout statements are the best available stand-in for processing history, and a clean record - low return rate, strong seller metrics, good standing - is a real asset in the file. Bring it.

02

Running your own checkout

A brand running its own checkout is the merchant of record. It submits the transaction, holds the recurring authorization, eats the chargeback and answers the complainants. Every risk factor on this page lands on it directly: the billing model, the claims, the supplier chain, the geography, the dispute pattern.

That’s why the same brand can be a comfortable marketplace seller and a hard direct file. On a marketplace, the platform’s rules push you toward compliant claims and the platform absorbs the disputes. On your own site, nobody is between you and the cardholder, and underwriting prices that exactly. Expect the direct account to be the one that gets scrutinized, reserved and reviewed.

What it means for approval odds:

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09 / HOW IT WORKS

How the application works.

Six steps. A complete file typically gets a decision in 3 to 10 business days, and the variable is documentation, not the processor.

  1. 1

    You submit the form - same day.

    Six fields. We read it and come back with questions, usually the same day.

  2. 2

    We pre-review the business - 1 to 2 days.

    We read the site, the billing model, the offer structure, the claim language, the supplier chain and the geography, and tell you what an underwriter will flag before anyone submits anything. This is where most declines get prevented.

  3. 3

    You assemble the documentation pack - 2 to 5 days.

    You gather the papers listed below, plus screenshots of the checkout and disclosure flow as they’ll appear at submission.

  4. 4

    We match you and you submit - same day to 2 days.

    Two to four processors whose acquiring bank actually boards your model, at your volume, in your geography - with the reasoning attached. Apply to one or two, not ten. Every application creates a record, and a cluster of simultaneous applications reads as distress.

  5. 5

    Underwriting - 3 to 10 business days.

    The processor reviews the file, usually asks one round of clarifications, and may run a site review against the marketing pages you submitted. Answer requests the same day. Files that stall usually stall because the merchant went quiet, not because the processor said no.

  6. 6

    Approval, MID and the first reserve review - 1 to 5 days, then 30 to 90 days.

    You get a merchant ID, gateway credentials and a settlement schedule. Confirm where the rolling reserve appears on your first statement so it isn’t a surprise on day one. Your first reserve review usually lands after one to three clean processing months, and your chargeback ratio, refund rate and disclosure compliance all feed into whether the reserve drops, holds or moves to a rolling schedule.

Expect to provide:

  • Business license and entity formation documents
  • EIN confirmation
  • Government ID for the signer
  • Bank statements - typically the last three to six months
  • Processing statements from your current or previous processor, if you have any
  • Product listings with certificates of analysis or lab reports
  • Supplier documentation naming the manufacturer
  • Website and checkout screenshots, including the subscription disclosure, trial terms and refund policy
  • A chargeback and refund history, with an explanation for anything elevated

Throughout, keep one habit: never describe your business differently to a processor than your website describes it. The file and the site have to match. When they don’t, the site wins and the account closes.

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10 / GOOD QUESTIONS

Supplement merchant account questions.

Can supplement brands get a merchant account?

Yes - with processors whose acquiring bank has an explicit supplement and nutraceutical policy. A supplement merchant account is underwritten by a bank that has agreed to board the category, not by a mainstream processor that approves the application and closes the account once the subscription billing and claim language become clear. The constraint isn’t whether it’s possible. It’s how many banks will price your billing model, and what your site has to look like for them to say yes.

Why are supplements considered high risk?

Recurring billing, free-trial offers, health claims, and a chargeback pattern driven by subscription fatigue. None of those is about the product being dangerous or illegal. They’re about a category where consumables generate disputes a hard good doesn’t, where a subscription makes it possible to be charged for something you forgot you bought, and where a health claim turns a complaint into a regulatory story. Underwriters price the combination, not the word “supplement.”

What rates should a supplement merchant expect?

Most supplement and nutraceutical brands land between 2.69% and 6% per transaction. One-time-purchase brands with documented supply chains sit at the low end. Straight subscriptions sit in the middle. Free-trial and negative-option offers sit at the top, and a trial offer with a thin processing history can go higher. A quote below roughly 2.5% for a subscription or trial business usually means the processor hasn’t underwritten the vertical properly, and that shows up later.

What is a rolling reserve?

A rolling reserve is a percentage of your monthly volume that the processor holds back to cover future chargebacks, refunds and disputes. Typical supplement reserves run 5% to 10% held for 90 to 180 days, then released on a rolling basis - so a 10% reserve held for 180 days means each month’s 10% comes back roughly six months later, provided the account stays clean. Reserves are standard in this vertical and negotiable at review, and some processors hold reserves for six months on trial offers specifically.

Can I run a free trial on a supplement subscription?

Usually yes, but it’s the single hardest billing model to place. Visa’s rules expect a reminder at least 7 days before the first paid charge, with a simple online cancellation path, plus express consent, a terms confirmation and a clear trial disclosure. Mastercard expects the acquirer to register continuity merchants selling recurring physical products before the first transaction runs. Expect the top of the rate range, a longer reserve hold, and a smaller list of processors willing to board the offer at all.

What is MCC 5968?

MCC 5968 is the direct-marketing continuity and subscription merchant category code - the code that governs trial and continuity offers, including nutraceuticals sold for ongoing delivery. A brand running a free or low-cost trial that converts to recurring shipments is typically registered under 5968 rather than 5499. The code matters because it pulls the account into a different monitoring and registration regime, and because it tells every risk system downstream that the merchant runs a negative-option offer.

What if I’ve been declined?

A decline isn’t a permanent mark, but it needs an explanation attached to it. Start by finding out why: was it the billing model, the claim language, the supplier chain, the geography, or a bank with no supplement policy? Fix the cause before you apply again, and don’t shotgun applications across five processors at once. If a previous account was shut down or a reserve was held, disclose it. Processors price disclosed history. They decline discovered history. Our notes on what to do after a decline or shutdown are the place to start.

How long does approval take?

A complete application usually gets a decision in 3 to 10 business days. The variable is documentation - certificates of analysis, supplier paperwork, entity documents, bank and processing statements, and the marketing review. Brands that have the full pack ready sit at the fast end. Brands that let underwriting chase paperwork sit at the slow end, and often get re-underwritten from scratch.

Can I use Stripe or Shopify Payments?

Not for a supplement subscription or trial offer at any real scale. Mainstream processors restrict or prohibit the category in their terms, and the usual outcome isn’t a clean decline at application - it’s an approval followed by a frozen balance or an abrupt account closure a few months in, which is worse, because it strands revenue mid-cycle. That applies most sharply to recurring and negative-option models. If your storefront is on Shopify, you can keep the platform and use a third-party high-risk gateway and merchant account in place of Shopify Payments.

Do I need a separate account for subscriptions?

Often, yes - and it’s usually a question of MCC rather than preference. If you run a one-time-purchase store and a free-trial funnel side by side, those flows may be registered under different merchant category codes, which typically means separate accounts, separate disclosure requirements and separate monitoring. Ask your processor, in writing, which MCC applies to each flow and whether one account can carry both. Splitting the flows is common, and it protects the cleaner one from the risk profile of the harder one.

11 / NEXT STEP

Let’s find your processor.

Tell us about the business - the billing model, the offer structure, the claims, the supplier chain and the geography. We’ll come back with the processors that fit, tell you plainly when one doesn’t, and prep the documentation with you before anything goes to underwriting.

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Supplements are one of several verticals we cover - browse the full list of high-risk payment processing industries.

Free to use · Team responds ASAP · We’re paid by the processor, not you.

This page is general information about payment processing and merchant underwriting. It is not legal, medical or tax advice, and it is not a promise of approval. Ranges are benchmarks, not offers. We don’t endorse or recommend any specific processor.

Sources